Planning Design Competitions to Cultivate Innovative Design Capabilities Among Hong Kong Secondary School Students

Despite the recognized importance of creativity in secondary education, the role of design as a faculty for teaching abstract creative concepts effectively is seldom explored in depth, hindering students’ development. To address these issues, this study aimed to motivate secondary students to engage more deeply in innovative design by proposing a university-led workshop approach within a design competition module. This module was first implemented at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the 2023/24 academic year, involving 301 students from 52 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Grounded in Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, this research examines the current challenges of design education and explores the role of the proposed competition in cultivating secondary students’ innovative design capabilities. The findings contribute to understanding how this creative pedagogy can enhance secondary students’ interest and motivation in developing creative design skills by integrating university-led workshops into competitions, thereby enabling both secondary and tertiary educational institutions to address creative design challenges.